


A Thousand Apologies

by fallofdeductions



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Feels, Loss, M/M, Reichenbach Falls, Reichenfeels, Romance, Sad, Sexual Content, Suicide, sexual descriptions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-06
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2018-01-14 19:18:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1277854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallofdeductions/pseuds/fallofdeductions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It all began with a note.</p><p>The story of how John lost Sherlock, how Sherlock got John, and the heartbreaks in between.</p><p>Written from both John and Sherlock's perspectives. Each chapter will say who's narrating it.</p><p>Feels, angst, smut, ect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Prologue.
> 
> John's POV.

My hands shake even as I read the note for the hundredth time. Or is it the thousandth? I can’t even tell anymore. All I know is that he’s gone. I say it again so that it might sink into my brain.

Sherlock Holmes is dead.

The words crack on my spine like a whip and my breath catches in my throat. I think for a second that it’s somehow raining inside the flat and then I realise, _Christ,_ it’s me. I pull the paper away from my face so the ink doesn’t run. I have to preserve it. Every single fucking word in that chicken scratch he called handwriting. It’s all I have left.

So I read it again:

 

_Dear John,_

_I hope that you aren’t angry with me. I had certainly hoped that you wouldn’t see my fall, but I can’t be sure. But of course you were there. I know you’ll be there. It’s in your nature—you’re a good man, John Watson. One of the best. That’s why I know you’ll be alright. That is also why I’m writing this._

_For God’s sake, don’t blame yourself. There is nothing you could have done to prevent this, and it wasn’t somehow because of you. I know what we are. Were. Tenses are a bit tricky in this sort of thing, aren’t they? Look at me, already writing in the past. Knowing that my ghost is reading these words to you now._

_Don’t cry, John._

_I love you far too much to allow myself to disintegrate before you. I hope she is good, whoever you find after I’m gone, and that she loves you just as much as I do. Did. There is grace inside your heart, John, and a fire inside your mind. I will never forget the way your name tastes as honey on my lips, much like your skin—and you make me remember why I am alive. You quiet all the noises like heroin nor nicotine never could. For that I am grateful._

_You have also loved me. God knows why—I never had the audacity to hope for something that precious. I have admired you every night since our first time in the cab. I will not say that I loved you then, however. No. I refuse to cheapen the experience of tumbling over the edge of the cliff that is my heart and falling into yours. Not with empty words. Not with blank-page meanings._

_When they bury me, I know you will not be alone. There will be people—ridiculous, meaningless, faceless people—and I want you to know that it’s alright. Whatever you’re thinking. I know it’s something terribly sentimental, either way. You are entitled to that. But you are also entitled to life._

_I suppose this is goodbye, John Watson. Take care of yourself._

_-Sherlock_

 

It still says the same damn thing. It still says that he was planning to go up on that goddamn roof and jump, that he fully fucking _planned_ on killing himself, and never said a word. Every nerve ending in my brain says I could have helped him. That I could have been there. That I could have done what lovers do when the other in in trouble—I could have done _something._ But I didn’t. I didn’t notice whatever was going on with him. I failed.

My heart lurches again and I have to put the paper down. I’ve noticed that nothing really feels right anymore. Greg tried to take me out for a pint on Friday and I said no, obviously. Obviously. Fuck, he’s seeping into my vocabulary. When did that happen?

Some cynical, familiar voice in the back of my head says _when you slept with him._ I tell it to shut up because it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t. I’m not gay.

I’m not. Because it was all bloody _him_ and the way he _moves_ and _speaks_ and _breathes_ —and I have to take a moment because that isn’t true anymore, is it? He told me once that I was the sun and stars and something about how his heart was cold, but it only needed a jumper. I smile. That was the first night. I think he was trying to flirt with me.

I have to laugh for a second. I remember all of his stupid flourishes and the thing he did with his collar and his coat, that one time that he kissed me when it was raining and used the bloody thing as an excuse. Took me by surprise. We ended up tumbling into the flat and snogging so hard that Mrs. Hudson had to shoo us upstairs.

I remember that first time, all soft touches and trembling fingers and Sherlock actually not knowing what the hell he was doing. He kept asking me if it was alright, if he was having at it _properly_ and I burst into horrifyingly girlish giggling. Sherlock just looked at me like I was _mad_ and yeah, I probably was, given the fact that I was making an honest effort at shagging the world’s only consulting detective. After he got over his little fit, I laid him down and showed him exactly how I felt.

Then there was Hamish. Christ, was it just last week that we talked about this? I can’t believe we just… _sat_ there and talked about getting _married_ and adopting a little boy. Named him and everything. Hamish William. Fitting, I told him. Sherlock even let me know his fucking ring size. I have to stop remembering this because I can feel my chest begin to burn and that tightening in my stomach. My knee gives out and I drop to the floor. I can’t find my cane—Sherlock hid it from me a long while ago—and there’s nothing I can do but lay there. I’m curled on the floor in front of a dying fire. What’s that sound? It’s like screaming. Like a wounded animal bleating out its last breath, lifeblood slowly pouring out onto the ground. I realise it’s me.

Time passes and I finally feel like getting up. It’s late, the sun’s just starting to set over the horizon, and I decide to go. I need to see him. Know that he was real. Because somehow the idea of a dark-haired genius in a bloody trench coat sweeping me off my feet doesn’t seem like it could really happen anymore. I have to see it. Even if I collapse.

The cab ride is dismal, of course. It’s starting to rain. But it’s London, of course it’s going to rain. The sight of the cemetery makes my body do that whip-crack thing all over again. I wonder if I can make it. I do.

I stand in front of his grave, _Sherlock Holmes_ embossed on the front like a fucking title. I stop myself from dropping to my knees again and start to talk.

“You ... you told me once that you weren’t a hero. There were times I didn’t even think you were _human_ , but let me tell you this: you were the best man, and the most human…human being that I’ve ever known and no one will ever convince me that you told me a lie. And so…There.” I take another deep breath and I can feel my heart start to race. I start to think about his voice and the wind and it hurts. It _hurts._ Hurts more than getting shot, hurts more than getting fucking _knifed_ that one time at a crime scene. I have to take a moment before I say anything else. “I was so alone,” I say quietly, “and I owe you so much.” It’s a few more seconds. I think I’m finished, so I turn around to leave. But there’s something else. “No, please, there’s just one more thing, mate, one more thing: one more miracle, Sherlock, for me. Don’t…be…dead.” The words strike my heart like a bullet I had never felt before. It’s worse. So much worse. “Would you do this? Just for me, just stop it.” I can’t breathe. “Stop this.”

I give him the only farewell suitable. I salute him. I salute Sherlock Holmes, the man who saved London. Who saved _me_. I salute the only man I have ever loved, and possibly the only human being that I could ever be happy with. I salute my best friend.

I turn back to walk to the cab. There’s something in the corner of my eye—something dark and vaguely familiar. I turn quickly and don’t see anything. It’s in my head. God, now I’m seeing things.

Because, of all the things I know, Sherlock Holmes is dead.

I’m only getting my hopes up.

 


	2. The Phoenix

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock returns. But is he welcomed?
> 
> Sherlock POV.

I always thought that the mind was a terrible thing to waste. I wasn’t entirely wrong, no, but I also wasn’t paying attention to the whole thing. The entire being. Turns out that the heart is, perhaps, even worse than the mind—enough work, and short of medical misfortune, it can be sharpened again. But while the mind is like a brilliant dagger, the heart is a house. It requires work, dedication, perhaps a dash or two of—dare I say it—good luck. But if the foundation is broken, the bits of wood and metal and insulation fall to pieces. It can, eventually, be rebuilt. But it will never be the same.

And this is what I have done to John Watson.

I deserve to be in that empty hole in the ground, if there is true justice in the world. But I have been in a rather unique position to show that it is not. Villains run free. Children die. Crimes are committed against the innocent without a prisoner to show for it. Such is the way of the world. It never bothered me much before. Criminals clever enough to escape deserved as such, was my belief. I worshipped at the altar of wits and cleverness without a second thought otherwise.

But this is not justice. It is not justice to watch a broken man with a broken heart mourn so deeply for a tarnished soul. A soul he loved and wanted so deeply for so long. He wrote me a eulogy. A eulogy that he performed so many times over so many years—has it been two, already?—that he had learned it by heart. Every Saturday at half one, he’s there. When I was unable to watch myself, Mycroft kept an eye on him for me. He’s like clockwork. A soldier at heart.  


My soldier. If I even have the right to call him such anymore.

But it’s been two years. It’s almost Christmas. And the last man connected to a certain Professor James Moriarty has fallen. I had never come close to feeling the darkness before that moment. Blood never fascinated me as more than evidence, but then…it was the second most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my life. It was fitting that the very last man to fall by my hands was the very one pointing a gun to John Watson’s head. I didn’t kill him quickly. I didn’t even use a _gun._ Instead, I killed his brethren. His friends. Made him watch. I was enraged, caught in a fit of dark yearning that I hadn’t felt since my days of low-grade heroine and questionable cocaine. But when I finally got to him, I did it slowly. Agonisingly. A dent in his skull from the gun, a kick in the face. Tied up with his arms halfway up his back, thanks to a dislocated shoulder courtesy of Sherlock Holmes. I wanted to cut his throat but found that, even in my rage, I couldn’t do it. A bullet to the head. He should count himself fortunate that I couldn’t prolong it anymore.

The sun looks different in London. It sets in brilliant colours of aubergine and scarlet, a shining sphere of burning light that drapes across the whole of the city. For a moment, everything stills. You have to be looking for it at the exact moment it happens. A millisecond of pure and ecstatic silence. It’s Saturday. It’s snowing. And John hasn’t been at my grave in six weeks. I wonder what’s become of him.

Mycroft’s intel says he’s going to be at a new restaurant down Marylebone. It’s a small place, very casual, but good quality. On the cheap side. In other words, John Watson in a nutshell. A perfect place for a reunion, I think.

I use my coat (again, courtesy of Mycroft, the insolent bastard) to hide my face. I don’t know what I expected, really. The café is easy to spot and I even hear him laughing in the dim quiet. But when I pass by the window, I’m stuck in place. All I see is him: glorious John, my John, my doctor, my blogger, my friend, my lover. A thousand things to a thousand people but all of him mine. No, not mine. There’s a woman sitting across from him. She’s got stylishly short hair and a clear laugh that cuts through the rest of the din. When did things get loud? I realise I’m standing there, staring like an idiot, when he looks.

The double take is expected. He catches my eye and turns back to his colleague (she _must_ be, who else _could_ she be?) but the ring on her finger says otherwise. My throat goes dry. He looks again. He doesn’t turn away.

And then he’s standing and grabbing for a cane seemingly out of nowhere. There’s raw anger on his face. I didn’t expect a proper greeting, of course, but this—

 _“I swear to God, if you aren’t talking in three seconds I’m going to throw you into traffic.”_ His voice is menacing and accusing. There’s no sign of his usual warmth and kindness. _“I **said** —“ _

“…not dead,” is all I manage, before I’m promptly struck square in the nose and thrown onto the ground.

The woman is who stops him, in the end. I hear her whispering something seriously into his ear, which makes him step away with clenched fists. Oh, he’s got one too. A ring. A shining, golden—

 _“You. Left. Me,”_ is repeated over and over. He doesn’t have to say it aloud. It’s written all over his face.

“John, why don’t we take him home? Maybe…sit down with a cuppa.” She recognises me. I don’t know how, but she does. Does she know the whole story? Probably not. I don’t see John telling her all of that. But I also didn’t see him punching me in the face, so I’m not exactly in the best position to be making deductions right now.

“No. He can go back to Baker Street. I’m sure he’s had someone taking care of it. Didn’t you? Someone who…who…who _knew…_ ” I can see the breakdown happening before it properly begins.

“ _John_ ,” is all I can say, my voice properly cracking and everything.

The woman looks unconvinced. “Love, maybe _you_ should take him back? I’ll get home fine. I know this is…this is…” She looks at me with nothing but venom. I can read the look in her face because I’ve had that same look. _You’ve hurt the man I love. You’re going to pay properly if it’s the last thing I do._

“John…” I start again. “…I cannot begin to express my regret over the last two years. I am…sorry. Deeply. Can we…” I look around at the cabs, but Baker Street isn’t but five minutes away. Interesting that he should chose such a close venue for his…date? The word makes my chest ache. “…can we go to the flat? I just…perhaps we should talk. Talk about…all of this. Then you can go home. With your…”

“Fiancée, yeah,” he says to me, almost pointedly. _The one who stayed with me_ is implied. “Fine, but only because I know Mary’ll insist.” She gives him a smug look and turns around without ceremony to hail her own cab home. Headstrong and confident in their relationship like I never was.

She waves him on without saying goodbye. And why would she when John was coming home to her in only a few hours?

We walk in silence. It’s like he’s trying to make sure I wasn’t some collective hallucination brought on by too much wine. Something in the water. His leg wobbles in the split seconds before his cane touches the ground. I want to help him. Somehow I don’t think my efforts will be appreciated.

No one speaks a word until we’re through the door, up the stairs, and in the sitting room. We take our chairs as if it were two years ago. Home from a case. But there is no laughter. All of the brightness has gone from the world. I am alone in the universe.

“I don’t care how,” he says finally. His voice is dark and dripping with malice, laced with the same darkness that drove me to almost slit a man’s throat. “I want to know _why.”_

I truly don’t know what to tell him. A thousand reasons lie on my tongue: _Because I’ve loved you. Because I needed to. I couldn’t have you dying on me, John, so I made the decision to do it myself._ But the only thing that comes out is, “You.”

“Me,” he repeats incredulously. “You did all that, ran all the way to bloody fucking Timbuktu for all I know, for _me._ ”

“Yes,” I say, as if that would end the conversation.

“I’m leaving.” He goes to stand up, but I’m faster. I’m standing over him with his wrist in my hand before I can register getting up.

“Wait. Just…wait.” I’m still standing, but he doesn’t make an effort to push me away. “This is…difficult for me. Just give me a moment.”

“A _moment._ I could’ve used a bloody moment two fucking years ago, Sherlock. I don’t need your _moment._ I want answers! Answers, Sherlock!” He accentuates his words with pounding fists on the side table. “Over and over again, I waited, I _waited_ , Sherlock. I thought, no way, there’s absolutely no possible fucking way that Sherlock Holmes is dead. You wouldn’t allow it. You’d sass fucking God to his face and get thrown back on earth or something. Anything. And I was _right._ You didn’t die, you just _left._ You left me, Sherlock!”

I had to stand back to give him air. John having a panic attack in the middle of the flat would be a bit Not Good. “John, John. Relax. Breathe. Can you hear me? I’m going to give you some space—“

But he stood anyway. Fed up, probably, and we’d only been talking for five minutes. “Perhaps I was wrong,” I admitted. “Wrong to come back. I’ve…hurt you. I’ve hurt you greatly.”

To my surprise, John didn’t head for the door. Instead, he stood before me in all of his glory, scrutinising me with deep blue eyes. “You did. You hurt me for a long time, Sherlock. It wasn’t until Mary—“

“Is that her name?

“What?” The pure shock on his face speaks volumes. I don’t need to hear anything else to know that he’s forgotten. Not, perhaps, about us, but his feelings. How he used to respond to me. The gasping breaths and grasping sheets that used to mark our nights. It’s behind him, now. Why shouldn’t it be? I’ve left him. It’s my fault. It’s always been my fault. “Oh. Yeah, um…that’s Mary. We’ve been seeing each other for about six months. Got engaged three weeks ago.” John looks away with a sigh that droops across his whole face. “Look, Sherlock, if you were expecting me to just…just pick up and run into your arms like some shitty romantic film…”

“I don’t,” I say immediately. “John, I hardly lured you here for a romantic endeavour. If I recall, your _fiancée_ was the one who insisted you come. I had nothing to do with it. Although, I’ll admit, I didn’t expect you to be engaged, but such is life.” This was going nowhere. We were halfway to strangling one another in the middle of a home we once shared. How I ever thought we could go back to being the friends we once were. I’m being an idiot. A complete and utter fool. “This was a horrible idea. You know where the door is, I won’t stop you. I haven’t lost so much dignity that I can’t tell when the conversation is over.”

But he reaches for my hand anyway. There’s confliction all over his face, like he doesn’t know what to do with himself. Or how his hand got on mine. “They’re rough,” he says. It sounds like a revelation. Like he’d somehow found the answer to the mysteries of life. “They were never rough before.” _Not like Mary’s. Not like yours,_ my mind supplies.

I fight the urge to snatch my hand away. Thankfully, he lets it go a minute later. There’s an awkward stretch of silence between us. So, rather than dwell on it, I turn on my heel and march into the kitchen to make tea.

There’s fresh English breakfast in a tin, the strainer lying perfectly next to dusted mugs. Mrs’ Hudson’s been cleaning, then. Of course she was. Did Mycroft ever tell her?

Footsteps. John’s coming into the kitchen. Caneless, too. Interesting. But he doesn’t say anything. I continue to make the tea, steep for four minutes without once turning my back. Sugar, cream. All done without making eye contact. He doesn’t seem to mind, even takes the cup from me and sips with a smile. “Perfect, like always. Mary can’t seem to make my tea right. I’m the one who does it. It’s a nice change, for once.”

I nod, but don’t respond. We stand there as we drain our cups. It’s awkward, the whole thing. There’s no laughing, no joking, no smiling. Just silence.

We snap at the same time. “I’m sorry-“

“Was being an idiot-“

“Didn’t mean-“

“Two _years_ —“

A crack of porcelain on the floor and he’s in my arms. His lips are warm and soft like I remember, hands rough and unmoisturised, which makes his hold on me even stronger. Pure, unadulterated strength holds me against the counter. I can’t move. I’m pinned. And it makes fire burn hot in my veins.

He picks me up and _shoves_ me towards my bedroom. I haven’t seen the place in years, but it doesn’t matter. We stumble down the hall together anyway. I manage to open the door without looking and my slight weight bounces on the mattress.

There’s a soft clink of metal on the bedside table. He’s taken off his ring. But he doesn’t give me a moment to think about it before he’s on me again, pouncing, teeth marking their territory every chance they get. I can’t help but groan and buckle in ecstasy. His hands, those gorgeous, wonderful hands—

John straddles my hips and actually rips off my shirt. Buttons fly everywhere. I mean to protest him, I really do, but then my hands are pinned above my head. He uses one hand to hold them down and the other to unbutton my trousers, now straining against a body that can hardly contain itself. Each kiss, lick, and bite say the things his lips cannot: _I’m sorry. I love you. I’ve missed you._ And then there’s the, **_“Don’t you ever fucking leave me again.”_**

He removes my pants and trousers in one fell swoop. I lie beneath him like a hare beneath its predator, pinned down solely by five fingers and a hard gaze. His fingers leave me for just a few moments, long enough to get his own clothes to join mine on the floor. I’m speechless. Floored. Livid. His erection juts out obscenely over my stomach. It makes my mouth water. But I still can’t move. No, I’m being treated to Captain Watson this evening. A fitting punishment. He’s angry.

John crushes his lips to mine again. His tongue fights to overwhelm my mouth, and it does. I rock against him on instinct, pleasure blossoming beautifully in my loins. But that only makes him angrier. He spits and wraps his hand around us both, eyes black like a demon’s.

“Oh, is that what you’re looking for? A quick fuck after going on your little holiday?” He thrusts roughly, forcing a harsh groan from the deep recesses of my throat. “Do you know what I’ve been through because of you? How. Many. Nights,” each word is another tilt of his hips, and I’m in ecstasy. He grunts without speaking. He doesn’t have to. We’ve dissolved into something non-verbal at this point. How I’m still speaking, I have no idea. But we’ve waited too long for this to last.

“Oh God, _John,_ ” I groan into his hair. He holds me tightly. Pants into my neck. I’m close. Heat prickles my skin like fire between us. My blood boils. Every atom in my body is screaming his name. _“Just there, just there, John please—“_

John gasps into my neck and _bites._ He moans loudly, each sound a staccato shriek. His hips rut against mine, harder, harder, and I’m coming. I feel something deep inside me wrench, muscles pool, heat spark behind my navel, until thick fluid shoots between us. It forces a loud, painful cry of his name from my chapped lips. Of course, it doesn’t take him long after once he realises what he’s done.

He lands on me with all his weight, though luckily it’s nothing I can’t handle. We lie together on my twisted sheets, bitten and red-lipped, bodies flushed with blood and pleasure. His arms are as strong as I remember. I seek solace in them.

My body is consumed by heat. I imagine flames licking up my sides, my abdomen, my chest, until the smoke fills my lungs like a long-needed cigarette. I am a phoenix, born from my own ashes. I am home. “John.”

He doesn’t respond, just shakes his head. Presses into my neck. I can practically feel his response: _Not right now. Nothing about her._

I nod in understanding. No, this was not the time. Instead, I curl us into a foetal position. We are a perfect circle. We move mountains and stars and align the heavens just to be together, and I’m the one who knows nothing about astronomy.

It feels like hours before he finally gets up. Presses a kiss to my forehead. John scuttles about as he looks for his clothes, puts them on after wiping himself off. “I’ve…I’ve got to go home,” he explains, as if I didn’t know. “Mary is expecting me.” The _so we aren’t going to talk about it_ is implied.

I nod before sitting up, taking the same flannel to clean myself off. My dressing gown is right where I left it, hanging on the door. I take it to cover myself. “I’ll show you out then.”

We walk in silence yet again. Everything seems wrong. I can’t stand it. John should be staying with me, sleeping in our bed. There shouldn’t be any Mary. There shouldn’t be anyone else in the world except us. Sherlock and John. Our names blend like one.

He turns back to me after he touches the handle at the front door. “I’ll text you,” he says, but there’s no joy in it. “I’ll…see you later then.” John hesitates, but plants a kiss on my cheek. Without another word, he turns on his heel and shuts the door.

I fall. My back somehow hits the door and keeps me up, hands covering my face. I can’t breathe. My heart is shattered to bits and scattered on the wind. I am lost. I am _tired._ After two long years, I am finally home. But for how I feel, I might as well be back in Serbia.

But I remember. There’s a wedding ring on my nightstand and a cane in my sitting room. Bits and pieces that John has left behind. I can only fathom the depths of his pain to act like that. John Watson is nothing but a loyal man.

Somehow, that breaks my heart more.

I suppose I deserve it.


End file.
